Pages

Sunday, 29 July 2012

Leeds Festival Preview // Pulled Apart By Horses Interview

Here is the latest in our Leeds/Reading Festival previews. And this week it is Leeds' very own Pulled Apart By Horses in the spotlight. They take to the main stage at Leeds on Friday and Reading on Sunday.

Est.1987 caught up with lead singer Tom Hudson and bassist Rob Lee earlier this year to chat all things touring, why they love Leeds and comedy encounters with Thom Yorke!

In terms of your new album, "Tough Love" there is a definite progression from your first. When did you start thinking about your second album?

R-Ideas have been kicking around for a long time really, but then we focussed on it for a few months and pulled it all together.

T- We still had lots of festivals on the weekends so it was cool; we didn’t do that thing where a band pisses off for like three years and then comes back and everyone’s forgotten. We were still playing like Readingand Leeds, and went to SXSW in Texas and Australia and did a lot of cool stuff.

R- The first album was a bit more of a communal effort where we were all in a room banging it out and coming up with songs, just jamming; we had no idea that we would even record an album. But this time around, songs were written by individual members, stolen moments when you weren’t on tour but were at home and could think about things a bit more.

T-It’s just a bit more focussed really. Before, we would just write songs and kind of scrunch them all together and that was the album.

Tom on stage in Manchester

Do you guys still live in Leeds and still go to The Packhorse, which is where you played your first gig as a band?

T- Yeah, Packhorse, Brudenell, that’s basically our weekends!

R-Although we haven’t been to The Packhorse in a while.

T- Probably because James [guitar] and Lee [drums] don't live there any more.

A lot of bands head to London, but Leeds has a great music scene and in terms of venues, lots of good ones – will Leeds always be home?

Both- Yeah, definitely!

T- As a band we spend so much time dipping in and out of London anyway that you see enough of it.

R- I think that’s quite an old fashioned idea now that you have to be in London to make it, because it’s so saturated down there with music and gigs. The business side of things is down there so, our management is, but touring wise Leeds is a great place to be because it’s so central. On this tour we’ve been going back home most nights which is cool. Once we get in to Europe and we have to spend three weeks constantly with each other we will want to kill one another.

T- There’s no going back! It is good though. Whenever we’ve been away for a while and we come home and are on the motorway passing Meadowhall and Sheffield we know we're nearly home.

R- Leeds is one of those places that’s quite magnetic and people end of wanting to stay there.

You guys have a bit of a reputation for getting yourselves injured on stage- how’s theinjury count this tour?

T­- I’ve got really weird injuries but they’re not all band related. I burnt myself the other night on a pizza- getting it out of the oven, I’ve got a thorn in my foot...

R- His girlfriend was in the van and she needed to pull over for a wee, so he got out in to the bushes with her to protect her…

T- But, I fell down a bank into a thorn bush…

R- He came back like a wounded animal with a thorn in his paw!

Pulled Apart By Horses

You’re named after Thom Yorke’s song “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”- have you ever

met the man himself and thanked him for the name?

R- Well, James is a massive Radiohead fan and we knew we wanted a name with Horse in it, because of The Packhorse pub [where we first rehearsed as a band]. Then James suggested Pulled Apart By Horses and it’s actually a Thom Yorke B-side “Reckoner “Feeling Pulled Apart By Horses”. Anyway, we were at Latitude Festival and myself and James were in the queue in the catering tent and I saw Thom Yorke behind us and said to James, and he was just like “whatever” thinking I was joking. So, he turned around and saw him and went white as a sheet and got really nervous and asking what he should do. James got so hyped up and then eventually Thom Yorke was outside scraping his leftovers into the bin and James was about 5feet away going, “Thom, Thom, Thom can I have a photograph with you?” Thom turned round and looked at him weirdly, and just went “no” and walked off. We were all sniggering!

T- Then, at Glastonbury we were sat round the campfire late at night.The whole day after we played, James had just f****d off, schmoozing about and I kept trying to talk to him and he’d just be like “yeah, yeah”. We were sitting around this fire at like 3am and I saw Thom Yorke walk past, off to clean his teeth before going to bed. I was saying “James, James” and he went “yeah, yeah, alright, I’m talking to someone else” kind of thing. So I just sat there with a smile on my face watching Thom Yorke walk into the hazy distance and then I told him after!

R- Comedy encounters with Thom Yorke! The most serious man in music and it’s all ridiculous, our encounters with him…

T- Brushing his teeth and having his dinner!

To read the full interview with Pulled Apart By Horses and to find out what you can expect from their live set at Leeds/Reading click HERE